Gipi 1963- (Gian Alfonso Pacinotti)

PERSONAL:

Born Gian Alfonso Pacinotti, 1963, in Pisa, Italy.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Pisa, Italy; Paris, France. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, illustrator, movie producer, movie director, and educator. Writer and illustrator of comics, 1992—; Santa Maria Video, founder, 2000—; teaches in fine arts academies. Previously worked as an illustrator in publishing and advertising.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Goscinny Prize for Best Script, 2005, for Notes for a War Story.

WRITINGS:

GRAPHIC NOVELS

The Innocents, Fantagraphics (Seattle, WA), 2005.

They Found the Car, Fantagraphics (Seattle, WA), 2006.

Garage Band, First Second (New York, NY), 2007.

Notes for a War Story, First Second (New York, NY), 2007.

Author of Wish You Were Here comic books; contributor of comics to periodicals, including Cuore, Blue, Il Clandestino, Boxer, Il Manifesto, La Repubblica, and La Straniero; editor of the anthology Esterno Notte. Also author of the blog Storie, disegni e appunti del disegnatore Gipi at http://giannigipi.blogspot.com.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gipi is the sobriquet, or pen name, for the Italian artist and graphic novelist Gian Alfonso Pacinotti. The creator and illustrator of numerous stories and comics in Italian periodicals, Gipi has also become well known by comic and graphic artist fans throughout the world. The author's fame has spread to the United States with the publication in English of his graphic novels Garage Band and Notes for a War Story. "Both of them … focus on groups of young men, forming little societies to cage them off from the tough realities of the world, and looking for/reacting to paternal influence," wrote a contributor to the Savage Critics Web site.

In Garage Band, the author features the lives of four friends in a band who are allowed to practice in the family garage of one of the band members. Guiliano's father told the boys they could practice in his garage only on the condition that they stay out of a trouble, a difficult task for the teens, who also include Stefano, Alberto, and Alex, since they mostly come from unhealthy family situations. "When I worked on Garage Band, my intention was to write in a quiet style, without violence, and keep a tone relatively light," Gipi told Michael C. Lorah in an interview on Newsarama.com. "This is because I wrote Garage Band for teens, aiming for an audience of 13-year-old boys."

Divided into five chapters, the novel follows the boys as they practice their instruments and deal with their problems. Stefano is a born troublemaker who is out to prove himself. Alberto is the most sensitive of the four and has an ailing father. Alex deals with the infamy of having a father who has disappeared after embezzling money and becoming enamored of Nazi rituals. Although Giulano is from a wealthy family, he feels that he possesses nothing that really makes him stand out. A contributor to the Jog—The Blog noted "the book's fascination with fathers & sons, which Gipi uses mainly to illustrate how the pressures of family drive young men to find a place of success and self-sufficiency, perhaps to make sense of the lives they've lived that far."

Although the boys are directed to stay out of trouble, they know deep inside themselves that they will not be able to adhere to this admonition. Eventually, when a chance comes up to make a name for themselves, they steal some expensive musical equipment. In a review of Garage Band on Oregon Live.com, Steve Duin wrote that the author "nails this careless, desperate stage of life, where everything is sheer urgency even though nothing has really happened yet." Duin added: "His watercolors are the best part of Garage Band." Horn Book contributor Claire E. Gross wrote: "The spare dialogue and intricate, saturated pen-and-watercolor-wash illustrations in this graphic novel capture each character's qualities and relationships with subtle grace."

Notes for a War Story also features three young men, this time drifters who are traveling across the bombed out countryside of some Balkan country. The author intentionally left the country unnamed as he told Nicole Rudick in an interview on the Words without Borders Web site. "I intended to place this war in any European country," Gipi noted. "In the Italian version of the book, the name of the villages are Italian names, in the French version, French names. I didn't want the reader to think, ‘This war happens elsewhere, far from me.’ My intention was to make people think about the possibilities of a war suddenly arriving in their own home."

The story is told by Giuliano, a sensitive and educated boy, as he struggles to survive along with Christian and Little Killer. Christian is an orphan who has never felt as though he belonged anywhere. Little Killer, whose real name is Stefano, appears heartless as he describes how he watched his father fall to his death but felt no horror or sadness over the incident. Eventually, the trio meets up with a sleazy con man named Felix, who has become a war profiteer. They become part of Felix's plans and soon find themselves in a large city where they face even more danger and murder, putting their friendship to the test.

In a review of the graphic novel on the Jog—The Blog, a contributor noted that "perhaps the greatest of the book's strengths is that it does not hesitate from depicting the life of crime and violence as maybe what is genuinely the best deal some of these boys could realistically hope for. Gipi never romanticizes the brutish deeds that these kids engage in, but he also posits that people who have been pushed to the fringes of society can achieve a temporary state of thriving when war comes to rip away the parental guidance of law and order." A Publishers Weekly contributor noted: "While not easy reading, the affecting story is made even more powerful by the understated execution."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2007, Jesse Karp, review of Garage Band, p. 56; July 1, 2007, Jesse Karp, review of Notes for a War Story, p. 51.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, July 1, 2007, April Spisak, review of Garage Band, p. 467; November, 2007, review of Notes for a War Story.

Horn Book, May-June, 2007, Claire E. Gross, review of Garage Band, p. 282.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2007, review of Garage Band.

Kliatt, May, 2007, George Galuschak, review of Garage Band, p. 32.

Library Media Connection, August, 2007, Dylan Thomarie, review of Garage Band, p. 72.

Publishers Weekly, February 19, 2007, review of Garage Band, p. 171; July 23, 2007, review of Notes for a War Story, p. 50.

School Library Journal, May, 2007, Benjamin Russell, review of Garage Band, p. 166.

Voice of Youth Advocates, June, 2007, Rebecca Moore, review of Garage Band, p. 140; August, 2007, Kathleen Beck, review of Notes for a War Story, p. 240.

ONLINE

First Second Books,http://www.firstsecondbooks.com/ (March 10, 2008), brief profile of author.

Isotope Comics,http://www.isotopecomics.com/ (February 21, 2007), "This One Goes to Eleven; It's Isotope Sneak Peek Time; Gipi's Awesome Garage Band."

Jog—The Blog,http://joglikescomics.blogspot.com/ (March 23, 2007), "More Tales of Boys and Their Games; Garage Band"; (July 22, 2007), "It Was the War of the Fringes; Notes for a War Story."

Lambiek.net,http://lambiek.net/ (March 10, 2008), brief profile of author.

Newsarama.com,http://forum.newsarama.com/ (March 10, 2008), Michael C. Lorah, "Notes on Gipi's Notes for a War Story."

Oregon Live.com,http://blog.oregonlive.com/ (April 22, 2007), Steve Duin, review of Garage Band.

Savage Critics,http://savagecritic.com/ (July 25, 2007), "Wednesday, July 25, 2007," includes mention of author and his work.

Stripburger,http://www.ljudmila.org/stripcore/stripburger/ (March 10, 2008), Paola Bristot, "Interview with Gipi."

Words without Borders,http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/ (March 10, 2008), Nicole Rudick, "Taken from Life: An Interview with Gipi."